The Magical Neocon Crystal Ball

"Any clear-thinking person would realize that courting diplomatic cooperation from Russia and Iran could stop the war in Syria overnight."

High Life
The Magical Neocon Crystal Ball
by Taki Theodoracopulos
August 03, 2012

Thucydides carefully structured his Peloponnesian War history as a cautionary tale about the moral decay that accompanies abuses of imperial power. "It is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can," said the Athenians blandly to the denizens of Melos before slaughtering them. (The tiny island of Melos, a Spartan colony, had refused to join an alliance with Athens in 416 BC, so the civilized Athenians punished innocent civilians by killing all the men and selling the women and children into slavery.) Athens was a direct democracy, whereas Sparta was a militaristic oligarchy, yet it was Athens that abused her power once the great Pericles had died of the plague and was replaced by the demagogue and total hawk Cleon.

Cleon, and after him Alcibiades, were the first neocons: greedy, eager to send great men such as Nicias to their death in Sicily (along with the Athenian fleet), and distasteful of compromise so long as others did the dying. Cleon had the opportunity to make peace in 424 BC, but he brashly broke off peace talks despite the pleadings of his great rival, the pious and cautious Nicias.

Picture George W. Bush as Cleon (at least the Athenian had the decency to die in battle, unlike W.), Ron Paul as Nicias, and Alcibiades as Cheney, and you can look into a crystal ball for the next fifty years down the Middle East road.

Mighty Uncle Sam, the lone superpower, is going Athenian in his arrogance as he plods on in the Middle East, compounding his catastrophic and criminal actions in Iraq by eyeing Iran and Syria as his next targets. What I don't understand is how normally clear thinkers such as William Hague can play the role of the chorus, repeating ad nauseam Netanyahu's ravings about existential threats to Israel, the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power.

Disgracefully, the Western media is echoing the Likudists. If it weren't for the Israeli lobby in DC, the warmongering Likudists in Tel Aviv, money from the Saudis and Qatar, and the neocon sofa samurai in the American media, any clear-thinking person would realize that courting diplomatic cooperation from Russia and Iran could stop the war in Syria overnight.

But it's not about to happen. The kleptocracies of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia are Sunni, and they want the Alawite Assad out. The Qatar-based Al Jazeera is skewering the news and banging the war drums louder and louder, with the Western media following in step without missing a beat.

What is the Western interest in the fall of a very unpleasant but (until recently) stable regime in the Middle East? This question would stump the Delphic Oracle, and then some. In 1991, George H. W. Bush recruited the elder Assad into his Desert Storm coalition to liberate Kuwait. Damascus sent thousands of troops. Assad was promised a land-for-peace deal on the Golan Heights. He got zero, natch. Now his son stands in the way of a Syrian-Iraqi Islamic state as choreographed by al-Qaeda, yet it's the West that's siding with the terrorists. Go figure, as Pericles never said.

Which brings me to Likud, whose charges of anti-Semitism against all its critics make it possible­in the late Alexander Cockburn's words­to always tell when Israel is in the wrong. Pro-Likud neocons played a large part in launching Iraq's destruction. Israel's right wing wanted Iraq permanently enfeebled. They got their wish.

The same forces are now driving the current American confrontation with Iran and the shameful abandonment of the Palestinians. In the meantime, Israel's citizens remain deeply at odds over their democracy's future. The unraveling of Netanyahu's coalition after a mere 10 weeks is proof that the influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union and a high birthrate in the ultra-Orthodox community mean that democracy itself is under threat. Activists claim that starting in 2010, the Israeli Parliament has passed more than 25 bills to limit freedom of speech and of the press. Former nightclub bouncer Avigdor Lieberman is now sitting in Abba Eban's old office. Ultras in the Orthodox community do not believe in such things as judicial independence or basic Palestinian rights.

Every Friday, hundreds of Israelis gather in Arab East Jerusalem and hold a vigil to protest the eviction of Palestinian families from homes they have occupied for generations. Extremist settlers are pushing them out with government eviction notices. First evicted in 1948, these poor souls are being expelled by Israel for a second time. Some young Israelis are as outraged as the most extreme of Palestinians at the injustice of it all.

The Jewish state has been taken hostage by the ultra-Orthodox parties and the settlers. Only recently Mitt Romney told the Israeli hawks that it's OK to attack Iran, or words to that effect. Palestinian human rights were not mentioned. The "P" word is verboten if one's running for office in the Land of the Free.

Last week I spent my evening recovering from a leg injury while watching Daniel Barenboim conduct his wonderful Israeli-Egyptian-Syrian orchestra in Beethoven's nine symphonies. He founded it with Edward Said, the late Palestinian historian. I also saw Barenboim carrying the Olympic flag with other worthies into the stadium. I wondered why Israel couldn't have more Barenboims and fewer Netanyahus. Enjoy the Olympics.

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